Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

avishere writes "People are losing their jobs, but for some execs the economic meltdown seems like the perfect time to get their software into the hands of those who can't afford their multi-thousand-dollar price tags. Software giants Autodesk and SolidWorks have each latched onto the worst-economic-disaster-since-the-Great-Depression meme and released free versions of their flagship computer-aided-design brands before their potential users are forced to sell their laptops on Craigslist. 'In these uncertain economic times,' Autodesk coos sympathetically, it will give away temporary licenses of AutoCAD and other software to those unemployed in the fields of architecture, engineering, and design. (They are also developing a Mac version, two decades after abandoning the platform.) SolidWorks was quick to respond with its subtly titled Engineering Stimulus Package. So if anyone out there has their weekdays free, jumpstart your hardware and design projects for cheap. Legally, too."

SolidWorks was already available for cheap since Dassault Systems released the student development kit. Sure, the licenses only last for for about 6 months, but they're also like $80. That's a far cry from the typical licensing fees.

Thats why Adobe is so popular. Piracy does build huge user bases and when the younger user base grows up they are already hooked on your brand and will buy a license eventually. Now I'm not saying that everyone will buy a license by quite a few will.

Thats why Adobe is so popular. Piracy does build huge user bases and when the younger user base grows up they are already hooked on your brand and will buy a license eventually. Now I'm not saying that everyone will buy a license by quite a few will.

I tried GIMP. Even the new 2.6 doesn't work with 16 never mind 24 bit colour depths. However CinePaint [cinepaint.org] can work with 32 bits per colour channel. GIMP doesn't work with CYMK either. Ah apparently there are plugins [meetthegimp.org] for CYMK. My problem is that CinePaint requires X11 to run on Macs but I wasn't able to get it to work. So what I want to do is install Ubuntu on my Mac to try CinePaint. I'd like to get a book on it but though there are books for GIM

Most Pirates just want to try an expensive piece of software before they buy it. Most of them are students or unemployed people who cannot afford the software so they pirate it. Once they get a good paying job they will naturally buy a legit version of each software title they pirated and liked. But not the ones they didn't like.

I recall Windows 3.1 became popular on the BBSes when they were downloading the install disk images and passing them from BBS to BBS. That is one way that Windows 3.1 beat OS/2 2.0

I still disagree with the time limits on the licenses. It's okay to watermark the creative output if someone hasn't purchased the product, but what in the hell is the point of stopping someone from using a "learning edition" product just because 90 days have passed?

Yes, some of us younger Civil Engineers were looking forward to some of the new features making things much more seamless and the layout of the Ribbon bar makes things nice also while the vets will grunt at you and use the command line.

The 90 days kind of ruins it though; I mean some of my individual projects from survey, layout to estimate take far more than 90 days just to get the wet stamp of approval.

Working only for commission right now is tough in between permanent jobs; would be nice if they Autodesk

Autodesk have been thought to do this for years already on the warez scene.

Autodesk are thought to have released their own cracks for the dongle that they supply with the software. Unlike their main competitor with regard to architecture (ArchiCAD), AutoCAD was on warez sites within days of release, crack and all. ArchiCAD has always taken longer to get out there, more than likely because they won't crack their own dongles.

Autodesk have been thought to do this for years already on the warez scene.

Autodesk are thought to have released their own cracks...

I don't know the validity of your statement, but I do know that they are quick to send their lawyers out if they think you are profiting with a pirated copy of their software.

I set up a website about 7 years ago when I was working for myself as a mechanical design engineer. The website showed some examples of my work created in AutoCAD, among other software packages. A few months after it went live I received a very threatening certified letter from a group of lawyers representing AutoCAD saying that they had no record of my company purchasing a license for AutoCAD. At that time I did not own a legitimate copy of AutoCAD. I wrote a letter back stating that the examples were created using a legitimate copy, that I was not currently using AutoCAD and that I would remove any references to it on my website if they wished. They then said that was cool and never pursued it again.

I don't know the validity of your statement, but I do know that they are quick to send their lawyers out if they think you are profiting with a pirated copy of their software.

Then their business model seems to have been working perfectly. They had the apparent moral high ground to send you letters and try and scare you out of working using pirated software, but thanks to the dongle crack you managed to go and build yourself up an AutoCAD skillset anyway.

It's actually cost effective to freely distribute your software to people who want to learn it.

It's like someone figured out that someone will eventually pay for a license for software you are good at using.

That may well be, but here I am with an Ubuntu machine and I'm willing to pay for another full Solidworks license if they will release for this platform. They _could_ be making money off me, but they'd rather give the software away for free then let me pay them for a Linux port. Luckily, SW 2006 runs fine in Virtual Box, and I can open it's window alone, without having the whole XP desktop visible.

Actually they are temporary licenses. This is really no different from the free software for students that Microsoft gives out or the Express version of Visual BASIC 2008, Visual C# 2008, etc.

It is software for the unemployed to learn to use, and when they get a job with it, their employer will have to pay the tens of thousands of dollars to have the former unemployed person become their employee and buy a retail version of the software.

Try reformatting your system and reinstalling the VS Express software back onto the new reformatted hard drive using the same user key. I did and I had to apply for a new key, it wouldn't take my old key.

In contrast to this the real Visual Studio takes the CD key after every reformat of the OS and reinstall of Visual Studio.

To further this, I don't even think the person who receives the software under a temporary license will be directly doing the reciprocation... supply and demand of labor will do the job for you. If there is an excess of potentially employable people who are familiar with your software, companies will not have to pay as high wages for new hires. Therefore purchasing your software will yield companies a net gain. So they buy your software rather than a competitor's, even if the feature set is comparable.

This is really awesome. I love solidworks and autocad inventor, great apps. But of course, they waited to give out free windows licences till just about a month *after* i got rid of my only remaining microsoft machines which were used exclusively to run these two applications. bah humbug, after finally getting out from under the microsoft heel now i have to go back again. At least i still have xp pro licences lying around.;-)

They were waiting for Apple to get more than 0.0005% market share. (Yes, I'm exaggerating.)

The funny thing is, now that they've finally done it, it's not necessary. If someone wants to buy a Mac for the "cool" factor of the design or having 8 xeonriffic cores, they can load windows on it and run all the windows software they want.:)

Actually, AutoCAD was the classic example of companies that "just don't get it" when it comes to the Mac.

AutoCAD for the Mac was released back in 1988, I believe. But what they did was port their DOS-based product to the Mac. It didn't work or look like a Mac product (no menubar, windows, or anything like that), it worked and looked just like the DOS product. The company said that they planned to release this version first and then make a "more Mac-like" one later on based upon how well this one sold.

The reality, though, was that there wasn't a big enough market for DOS ports to the Mac.

That's for sure.

Mac users expected a Mac interface.

That's mostly true, but the key is that Mac users demand a good UI. If you look at something like Maya, that breaks a lot of Mac UI principles but it's not a complete train wreck like Autocad always was.

Actually, AutoCAD was the classic example of companies that "just don't get it" when it comes to the Mac.

AutoCAD for the Mac was released back in 1988, I believe. But what they did was port their DOS-based product to the Mac. It didn't work or look like a Mac product (no menubar, windows, or anything like that), it worked and looked just like the DOS product. The company said that they planned to release this version first and then make a "more Mac-like" one later on based upon how well this one sold.

And maybe if they stopped calling these times "economic" all money would disappear!

And maybe if they'd stop calling it "time" our universe would disappear!

Or at least be static, in which case we'd have no chance to formulate thoughts on the universe, in which case the universe would, in essence, cease to exist due to lack of observation. Or maybe instead we'd all instantaneously be travelling at the speed of light, since the universe would be static (i.e., "time" would have stopped). Or something.

You may have been marked as funny, but you do deserve a bit of insightful for that.

Perhaps not all of it, but a portion of the 'uncertainty' is due to the fact that everyone is certain that we are in 'uncertain' times. If we stopped pushing that down folks throats, then there might be less panic to keep things stired up.

People are scared of spending money right now because they hear "OMG CRISIS" every day, but the best way to make sure that we don't end up in another Depression is for people to spend money. Otherwise, more businesses (small businesses, mind you, I'm not talking about those "too big to fail") will go out of sale, putting more people out of work, putting the economy in an even worse state.

But then the big companies won't be able to get free "bailouts" from the governments, and they'll have to do desperate things to make money....like selling goods and providing services for reasonable prices. Oh no!

Higher unemployment, a bit of something that looks like recovery, a sudden bout of inflation, high interest rates, more unemployment, inflation gets under control, unemployed bankers find something better to do with their lives than make bets about something they don't understand, then recovery. Might be some other fun stuff in there along the way, but that's the main thrust of it.

I've been wondering for a while now why they didn't just get down to the business of finding the exact value of the mortgage backed securities. If they did, it would end the whole problem almost immediately: investors would be willing to buy them again because they would know their true value.

Now I know. It's corrupt bankers, trying to hide their corruption, and cowardly politicians, trying to 'protect' the general public. We could be all done with this by now and on the road to recover

We know how often people typically default. We know how often they typically default during recessions. The only real unknown here is how many of those loans were given to people without documentation. How many of those loans were rated AAA when in reality there was no chance they would be repaid. If those questions are answered, we can return stability to the financial sector. Although it will probably be a stability at a point much lower than some people would like.

We know how often people typically default. We know how often they typically default during recessions. The only real unknown here is how many of those loans were given to people without verification of what they could pay. How many of those loans were rated AAA when in reality there was no chance of being repaid. If those questions are answered, we can return stability to the financial sector. Although it will probably be a stability at a point much lower than some people would like.

I'm not entirely convinced that recent recessions will be a great guide for foreclosure rates, home values were way out of whack, and this recession looks to be pretty severe, so the models are getting pushed on from both sides.

Indeed, valuing anything is not precise, but it needs to be precise enough for people to dare to take risks.

In any case the point of my original post was that I hate everyone involved in this thing. Read the link that someone above me posted and you will see why.

There are two big problems with Adobe software: full licences are very expensive (particularly the upgrades) compared to good-enough competition, and a lot of the big name products now come with DRM that causes serious practical difficulties even without the ethical considerations that would offend a lot of people reading this.

Until you fix those things, your software is not a viable choice for many of us, so please keep your unsubtle advertising to yourself.

I'll be honest with you: The DRM in Photoshop causes a very real and direct problem for me, as a single user who previously used her Photoshop license on three machines, all of which are not used by anyone else. I am a legitimate user, not attempting to defraud the company in any way, and Adobe's DRM is nonetheless extremely inconvenient for me. However, I have the same exact problem with the DRM in Autodesk Maya, which also limits me to two machines. So I don'

First, what Adobe products use is not DRM. We devalue the word if we tag every software restriction as "DRM".

What Photoshop and other CS products have is license management (think WGA if you will). It will let you activate the products two computers, which I actually find decent. On the other hand, transferring a license from a dead computer can be a hassle (almost happened to me once, the drive was failing but I managed to boot and deactivate the license on it). I wish they had an online tool for managing

Eclipse Ganymede the other IDE is free as well,I've got it installed and working on Ubuntu I've not had time to do much with it yet but i've tried a few simple projects.don't think there are too many restrictions its an alpha though and time limited to about 8 months I think.looks like fun anyway.

I was hoping that they were just giving away short-term licenses to anyone, but apparently if you sign up for the program, you have to be verifiably unemployed. I wonder what method they use to check...

(hmm... Firefox says that "verifiably" isn't a word, but I looked it up, turns out it's a valid adverb form [thefreedictionary.com] of "verifiable")

What kind of phenomenal privacy grab is that?! "For the price of a license we can not only know who you worked for, but why you're no longer there, and "aggregate that information (in reversible ways) to better provide you with the Autocad customer experience".

(hmm... Firefox says that "verifiably" isn't a word, but I looked it up, turns out it's a valid adverb form [thefreedictionary.com] of "verifiable")

firefox's dictionary is horrible. i've lost track of the number of technical terms and simple grammatical derivations it's missing. the os x dictionary is far better, but i'm stuck on windows here at work....

I'm not entirely sure they are checking, so much as going by the "honor system". I signed up and was verified within a couple hours... like around 2am CST. If they are actually verifying this stuff, it's probably not being handled by a human.

That said, I'm glad these guys are doing this. The software is interesting and makes for a unique learning experience. Just don't get any funny ideas and try using it for profit though...

This actually makes sense. The most important thing for a software company to be successful is to have people who know how to use their software. Which is why student prices and Learning Editions exist. And there have been reports that some laid off workers are starting their own companies, so getting your software into the hands of those people would be a smart move, too.

A number of years ago, an Autodesk sales rep told me that the company consciously turned a blind eye to 'unofficial' copying of their software by students. Their increasing use of DRM has probably made it more challenging to copy AutoCAD since then, but it seems as if this announcement is merely making an unofficial policy official as a PR move.

This actually makes sense. The most important thing for a software company to be successful is to have people who know how to use their software. Which is why student prices and Learning Editions exist. And there have been reports that some laid off workers are starting their own companies, so getting your software into the hands of those people would be a smart move, too.

My local Solidworks distributor is a moron in this regard. He insists that students pay $400 for a license. And the company won't sell to me directly. I don't think that SW even has our local language support, so I will probably buy the $99 student version from a foreign vendor.

I should also mention that when I went to my faculty's computer help desk to ask about a student version, they gave me two options:1) Pool with 9 other students who would be willing to share a license (I have no idea how this would w

"That, or they're acknowledging the true value of bits on a disk: zero."

You can make ridiculous claims all you want, but you can have the particular stream of "zero value" bits to which I lovingly refer to as my pr0n, when you pry the storage medium out of my cold dead hands (well the right one might still be a bit warm)...

Read this sort of thing along the lines of: "Since you're now low on dough and high on time, we're giving you our stuff for free so you dare not move to open source in general and Blender [blender.org] in specific to refocus your skills there, because that little Project is closing in on us in leaps and bounds and frankly is scaring the living piss out of us."

I sold my Lightwave 8.5 Licence (+ books 'n stuff) and forfeighted the right for cheap upgrades of this very neat Hollywood Grade 3D Kit because Blender has gotten so good, there are only very few features missing that LW has, and quite a few that LW (or any other closed source kit) doesn't have. Oh, and btw., Blender 2.5 is coming closer with a complete architectural redo that will boost its developement even further. The 3D market is tough as it is and Blender is a scaring thing to watch for SideFX, AutoDesk, NewTek and the likes, you can believe that. The 3D tool market allways was tough, but these days its even more so - wouldn't wanna swap with any of those companies still asking upwards of 3000 Euros for their software.

That may be true for the architectural design side of things, but isn't really true for floorplans and is certainly far from true for the SolidWorks part of the story. SolidWorks is still the platform of choice in almost every Mechanical Engineering project I've gotten a glimpse of.

The thing however, and this applies to AutoCAD too in this case, these products are 3D CAD, not graphics software. The mindset to work in one is different to working in the other

Then you must not have been part of many mechanical engineering projects. Solidworks is used by little guys who don't have the cash to pony up for the real deal. The big engineering firms in the aerospace and automotive sectors (along with pretty much any Fortune 500 engineering firm) use complete engineering packages provided by CATIA, UGS/IDEAS or Pro-E.

Since it's such a successful project, it looks like somebody must pay for the developers... 3D graphics is a fairly specific area that requires not only generic programming knowledge but a fair amount of math. I looked around a little at http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/ [blender.org] but there is no list of donators or sponsors. So, who's paying? If it's about services - what services? Developers are usually not very good at teaching art and writing books.

I think this is incorrectly interpreting the motive of these companies. Its not because of fear of blender. If it was, they would give it away regardless of the economic situation. This is much more about marketing their product to people that are in a dire economic situation. Once they attain these loyal customers now, they'll continue to be loyal when the economy returns. Besides, there is some evidence [google.com] that during the great depression, it was the companies that continued to aggressively promote their bra

Just so you know, Blender is not a suitable alternative to SolidWorks for 3-D mechanical design. If there was an even halfway decent open-source project that had 3-D modeling capabilities that was halfway compatible with SolidWorks (industry standard), I'd switch in a heartbeat. This seems like a logical and good move on their part. They understand that if people get used to using their software, they might just buy a license down the road...

we (well not me, but the engineers i work with )are pretty serious solidworks users.and at the last project mtg, the boss says, i gotta show everyone this, i did a model of our project over the weekend with google sketchup which is free, and he says, of course it isn't solidworks, but the 3d rotation is better...Those of you with memories of more then a few minutes will remember that there use to be this great software called proE, and it was incredibly exspensive, and along came this "low cost" upstart, s

Visual Studio Express [microsoft.com] is free (as in beer) by design. Of course, it is a Microsoft product, so you have to be willing to contaminate your workstation with binaries from the Evul Kingdom.

And a 240 day license of the various MS server products is free as well.

There is enough software for anyone to go around. For any closed source package, there is at least 1 open source alternative. Anything from Office utilities to realistic Flight and Space sims, it's there.

All you need to do is prove to them that you aren't the only one that wants to pay them for a Linux port. Whining that they don't want your money is counterproductive. Find more people who also want to give them money, and prove to them that it's in their best interests.